


Loneliness Like a Heartbeat

by objectlesson



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M, Mild Blood, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 14:58:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13273887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: It simply doesn’t happen, not in the light and not to boys born from dust and Bantha shit baking under dual suns. Not to saviors who don't even believe they’re saviors yet.





	Loneliness Like a Heartbeat

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my partner for their birthday. it's technically canon and sort of takes place between A New Hope and the Empire Strikes back, but at the same time it sort of exists outside the canon and is likely littered in inconsistencies with the canon. I'm not a Star Wars expert, not by a long shot, so this is more feeling than fact. I hope someone enjoys it!
> 
> Thank you Jen, for reading whatever weird shit I send you, even while you're on holiday!

Luke sleeps inside the Millennium Falcon, and still he dreams of Tatooine. 

He dreams of Ben’s voice, even and haunting, and of his aunt and uncle’s charred bodies, crumpled and smoking and stinking of death. 

When he wakes in a cold sweat, he talks himself down. _There’s no death here,_ he tells himself, wiping perspiration from his brow with tremulous hands. _It smells like oil and gunmetal and Wookie and Han’s liquor. It smells like home_. These are the thoughts that lull him back into an uneasy sleep, the ship’s hull creaking around him like something alive. 

Luke doesn’t call the Falcon home when he’s awake and reframing his fear as motivation; he’s only like this in the throes of his nightmares. When he’s an orphan. When he’s most lonely. 

Come morning, he stumbles into the cockpit on socked feet, regulation black coffee steaming in his tin mug, and as always, Han asks him if he got his beauty sleep. 

_Sure,_ he answers, shrugging, as he tries to forget the things he dreams of. 

—-

It’s hard, though, when he's so far away from red skies and twin suns, when the endless sprawl of stars sprinkled black between rebel bases blends into a smudge of unrelenting, streaky darkness. It’s hard to find something to hold onto, a constant, when your home is light-years away, and your life and everyone in it is burnt to ash. He's trying to feel reborn from it, to step into this destiny that he’s apparently supposed to have. Some days it feels ill-fitting; other days it feels too big, terrifying, like the distant memory he has of wearing his father’s robe, one of his only remaining possessions folded neatly into a metal box under his bed on Tatooine. Every day, though, it feels like a lie. 

The Falcon at least provides a constant, the Falcon and everyone on it.

Most of all Han and his ever-changing eyes, even if nothing else ever changes about him, even if Luke can predict his every sarcastic, biting response. At least his eyes bely the inside. Green when he’s angry, brown when he’s sad, blue-grey when he’s fixing something on the ship, gaze turned unwaveringly into the light. Han Solo and his pilot’s eyes, his pilot’s hands, everything that Luke has ever wanted or dreamed of being back before he was bogged down in this _destiny_ , back when he spent time imagining the sort of future that he’d like to have if he ever got off the crummy, burning little rock that he misses so much now. 

Luke thought he was a slow-blooming normal before he met Han, but after Han and his blasters and his infinite, ill-founded arrogance, Luke realized that he had never been normal at all. It isn’t _just_ that Han is everything that he wishes he could be, the future he’s been robbed of. It’s more complicated and dirtier than that. There are things he wants from Han that he’ll never get, things that men want from others but can’t have during rebellion, not when there isn’t any time to figure out something so messy. Not when Luke is Luke, soft-edged and scared all the time and nothing without his destiny and Ben behind him, guiding the motion of his hands like the father he never had, the lover he never would. Not when Luke is Luke and Han is _Han_ , sharp and witty and larger than life, the stuff of legends. 

It simply doesn’t happen, not in the light and not to boys born from dust and Bantha shit baking under dual suns. Not to saviors who don't even believe they’re saviors yet. 

So Luke allows Han to ruffle his hair and give him a hard time and thank him for things he shouldn’t be thanked for, and sometimes when he’s alone, he lets himself wonder what he looks like under his shirt, what all that heat and solidity might feel like beneath the longing splay of his hand. Anything beyond that idle yearning feels like too much, a luxury, and there isn’t room for such frivolity when the galaxy is at stake, and you’re the one who’s supposed to be saving it. 

—-

Han’s injured in a small battle at a remote camp on the very outskirts of their Hoth base, and Luke loses his goddamn mind over it because that’s what happens when you lose everything, and you can’t afford to lose a single thing more. 

He packs the wound with snow to stave off the bleeding, tells him, “You’re okay,” in a shaky voice more times than he can count. _You’re a fool,_ he tells himself while the man he loves bleeds out, the slick of it so red against the white powder, obscene and horrible. _You’ve spent all this time worrying, hating yourself for wishing he could be yours, and here, now, he’s going to die. Blood against the snow, and you with nothing to show for your pitiful life, a farm boy plucked from the sand, transplanted somewhere he doesn’t belong. He’ll die, and you’ll never have even told him the filthy things you want._

“Don’t die,”he chokes out, snow melting pink down the expanse of Han’s arm as Luke hauls him up and drags him to shelter. “Don’t you die. M’not done with you yet,” he pleads, which he wouldn’t have said a day ago, an hour ago, even. Blood changes minds, though, and everything he ever stopped himself from confessing seems insignificant now, too insignificant to keep a secret. Han’s delirious anyway, so Luke thinks he might as well be saying it to the ice, the wild white sky storming above them, but Han hears him, coughs, head lolling in snow. 

“What? You make it sound like you’re gonna kiss me, kid. Maybe I should just die after all,” he jokes, and it simultaneously infuriates and relieves Luke.

“No, _don’t die_ ,” he begs, digging his nails into the flesh of his arm. “Keep breathing.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Han sighs, eyes fluttering beneath the lids, troubled lines through his brow. “You got me. I know.” 

Luke wonders why he knows, and then he stops wondering. 

—-

Han does most of his healing on the base, and by the time they get back to the Falcon, he's fine but still milking the injury for all its worth. Luke complains about waiting on him, just to save face, but the actual _act_ of tending to his injuries feels like a better-fitting destiny, less of a lie than anything else in this mess. He wants to help him, to heal him. To protect him. _I’m yours_ is the mantra of his work as he devotes himself to the cause. _Yours_. 

If there was once shame in it, it's gone now. Replaced with something else, something like resignation. It’s what happens when you’ve lost everything, and you can’t afford to lose a single thing more. 

—-

Han’s dizzy with pain medicine and liquor when it happens, and still, it’s the realest thing that Luke has ever felt, the sharpest edges, the breath struck out of him like lightning creating glass in the Tatooine desert. Luke’s life has been a mess of confusion and fire and stars since Ben left, since even before that, but this, _this_ is real. This is the only star, the brightest flash across the blackest sky. 

He’s bringing Han food, eyes trained on the shiny pink scar of his arm as he stands, palms sweaty around the edge of the tray. “What are you staring at, kid?” Han slurs, swigging from a bottle before he sets it down. “You saw it when it was worse.” 

“Does it still hurt?” Luke asks, setting the food down on Han’s cot before gingerly lowering himself next to his body, carefully maneuvering so that none of their flesh is touching. He's worried that if Han feels it, he’ll _know_. That the Force will give him away through their skin, spilling secrets.

“Not bad,” Han murmurs, making a face and grabbing the tray. “Regulation rehydrated rations.Triple R, my favorite,” he grumbles, picking at his food somewhat forlornly.

Their routine dictates that Luke scolds him for being ungrateful, but Luke doesn't have it in him tonight. The Falcon hums around them, and his fingers move beyond his will, suddenly pressing against white, dimpled scar tissue, like something from a dream, from a fantasy. “It looks like it hurts,” he whispers. 

Han must be able to tell that he’s in a mood tonight, so he finishes laboriously chewing his bite of food before setting his tray down, heaving himself off his pillows, and laying a hand on Luke’s shoulder. The touch sears, electrifies Luke, and he grits his teeth against the sudden burn of it. _Yours_ , he thinks, heart thundering. _They’ve got it all wrong, I’m not the rebellion’s, not Ben’s, not the galaxy’s. Just yours._ There's a humiliating burn to it because Han Solo and his heap-of-junk ship? They’re nothing, no matter the legends. Luke knows the truth; he and Ben found him in a bar, picking fights and smelling of engine grease, of a distillery. When the grandeur of fantasy sprawls ahead of Luke, promising a future of beauty, this, _this_ is what he wants. Han Solo and Han Solo’s garbage. A man who hardly even cares for him, his hand upon his shoulder. It feels deliciously defiant after Ben built him up and left him, a boy amid the rubble, told him that he was worth so much more than that which he left to burn on Tatooine.

“I wanted to thank you,” Han says, squeezing. “For saving me back on Hoth. I owe you.” 

“A kiss,” Luke blurts, remembering that day and spilling the words without thinking, and Han’s eyes get wide, scandalized, but he doesn’t pull away. 

He laughs nervously. “Is that what you want?” he asks, thumb jutting into Luke’s collarbone, biting and sharp. “Little farm boy like you, all the way out here in space…you just want a kiss?” 

Luke nods, eyes heavy as he blinks. “Have you ever…you don’t have to. If you don’t want. I know I’m not…well. M’not your type.” 

Han shakes his head, dropping his hand and using it to fiddle with his sheets. “Why...because you’re young? Or annoying?” 

“And a man,” Luke breathes. 

Han scoffs. “A boy, maybe. Not a man. And even if you were, you wouldn’t be my first…jeez. What do they teach farm boys on Tatooine?” 

_Not much,_ Luke thinks, _bet you could teach me more,_ but he can’t speak, voice and breath lodged in his throat, silencing him. He’s pitching forward, stomach knotted and cheeks flushed, and as his brow presses into Han’s and Han doesn’t pull away, he wonders how much he can get away with, how far he can push this when they’re both so lonely, when the galaxy is theirs to save and that burden can’t just be on _him_. He licks his lips and presses a single, tentative kiss (his first) to Han’s chapped lips. He tastes like sleep and alcohol and the whole sky and all its stars, and Luke doesn't know if there's a single thing beyond this, or if he has reached the end of the galaxy. 

After a moment and a reluctant sigh, Han kisses him back, roughly, a hand in the back of Luke’s hair, pulling hard enough to hurt. “Bad idea, kid. You’re a big war hero, and I’m a no-good pilot with a criminal record,” he says when he pauses for a breath. “This is payment, and then it stops.” 

_But I’m yours_ , Luke thinks, words catching and snagging in his throat. All that comes out is a whine. “Alright,” he murmurs, stealing one last kiss, noticing the green flash of Han’s eyes, wondering if he's angry, or if this is something else. “Okay.” 

Han’s lying, though, because he leans in and does it again, this time fierce and closed-mouthed, the outline of his teeth behind it like a threat. “Huh,” he huffs into the space between them, breath puffing out over Luke’s desperate, longing lips before he licks up into them, just for a single, searing second. “You kiss soft, for a boy. No teeth.” 

Luke doesn't know what that means, if it’s good or bad or too much or not enough. He just knows that he wants more and that Han hasn’t reminded him in three whole seconds that this is a bad idea, so he dips forward again, kissing Han flush, then the corner of his mouth, tongue daring to smooth ever so gently over his plush bottom lip for a second before he scares himself and pulls away. Han keeps him in place with the fist in his hair, though, pulling him back, opening his mouth up, and _really_ kissing him, deep and dirty and wet, and Luke finally closes his eyes, realizing that they’ve been strained open this whole time, like he might miss something if he blinks. 

It feels like being split apart, like being choked, and he’s forgotten to breathe, but he doesn’t care. _Yours_ , he thinks, hands flying out beyond his will to brace open on Han’s broad shoulders so that he can hold himself up under the fierce buffeting of the tide. And there, leaning over Han’s cot on the Falcon, Luke lets himself be kissed by a man. Kissed and kissed, until his chin is wet and scrubbed raw from Han’s stubble, too dizzy to see anything but static when Han finally pushes him off, takes a deep breath, and combs his hand through his hair. “Okay, that’s enough kid,” he says then, voice rough, tired. “I gotta eat, remember.” 

“Right,” Luke sighs, touching his face with numb fingers, his own skin seeming somehow unrecognizably hot and scoured, even to himself. He's different, now, he’ll never be the same. He isn’t Luke from Tatooine, the orphan farm boy who’s supposed to save the whole galaxy, even though he’s nothing from nothing and has never been kissed. He’s Luke who has tasted Han Solo’s spit, has sucked Han Solo’s tongue. Even if it never happens again, he’s been changed by it, indelibly, and will never be the same. 

“Hey,” Han’s voice cuts through the room like a blunt instrument. “You good, kid? I didn't fuck you up, did I? Tell me I didn't fuck you up.” 

_No, you changed me_ , Luke thinks, but he just shakes his head. “No. That was great. I...thank you.” 

Han laughs a bit, humorlessly and through a bite of food, shaking his head. “Nah, you don’t wanna thank me,” he mumbles, almost to himself. Then, after a moment, “You’re the one who saved my life. We’re just square now.” 

Luke nods as he leaves, and tries to forget the things he dreams of. 

—-


End file.
